of Research and Inventions, which works with respect to special devices which go on board.

That, it seems to me, is illustrative of some of the complications of procurement, and why it must be so closely integrated with the using service. You start with your economies down at the bottom, and that is why I say that it is a grubby job; since it involves taking care of all of these particular functions which I have talked about.

Organization changes, in and of themselves, cannot accomplish the saving but they can supply the driving force and momentum for putting them into effect. In particular, economies can be effected in the following fields:

(1) Integration of requirements; (2) Inventory control; (3) Coordination of purchasing.

Senator ROBERTSON. But, Mr. Secretary, as we pointed out, that is already going on to a very large extent, is it not?

Mr. KENNEY. That is correct, Senator Robertson. And as I again say, I hope it continues, and I hope we improve upon it.

Senator ROBERTSON. Well, you are improving as fast as you can.. Whenever anything comes up which is possible of joint purchase, it is considered immediately, is it not?

Mr. KENNEY. An orderly procedure is established now for considering all those problems.

Senator ROBERTSON. You have a board, and the Army has a board.. Your board is headed by Admiral Horne, is it not?

Mr. KENNEY. Now, the board which Admiral Horne heads involves a problem which is a little different from that. That is the board which is studying the problem of use of facilities which are susceptible of common use. What I am talking about here are the problems of procurement.

Senator ROBERTSON. Coordinating purchase. I see. But those are very largely in effect today, and a great deal of money has been saved on it, such as the $55,000,000 saving which you quoted on one item. Mr. KENNEY. On the operations of the Aeronautical Board; that is correct.

Senator ROBERTSON. What I wanted to point out is that many of the things that are in this bill are already taking place and have already resulted in great savings. $55,000,000, to my mind, is a great saving. Mr. KENNEY. That is only under the operation of one board. Senator ROBERTSON. One board, yes.

Mr. KENNEY. And as I say, you cannot go down the line and itemize, board by board and group by group, the specific dollar savings involved.

Senator ROBERTSON. As I said, it has been a stupendous job, and I did not think you would have any figures, and I am delighted that you were able to give us that $55,000,000 saving on the Aeronautical Board. Mr. KENNEY. With respect to the first point, involving integration of requirements, requirements involve the determination of what is needed and how much and initially this is primarily a military function. Section 111 (b) of S. 758 vests in the Joint Chiefs of Staff the authority to prepare joint logistic plans and to assign logistic responsibilities in accordance with those plans. The translation of these requirements into the individual items required involves specifications, schedules, contract forms, and many other factors.

Senator ROBERTSON. I do not want to interrupt you too much, but to keep the record straight I just want to call attention to the fact that the Joint Logistics Committee, the Joint Military Transportation Committee, the Joint Communications Board, the Joint Army-Navy Petroleum Board, are all committees under the Joint Chiefs of Staff already in existence, are they not?

Mr. KENNY. That is right. I am not sure whether they are all under the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Aren't some of them under the ArmyNavy Munitions Board?

Senator ROBERTSON. No; the ones that I have given you now are definitely shown to be under the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In fact, while I did not say so, each one has "Joint Chiefs of Staff" before it. I omitted that for the sake of brevity.

Under the direction of the President, the Joint Chiefs of Staff consult together on matters of joint concern to the armed forces, advise the President as to their use, and take appropriate action to implement his plans and policies as Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy.

In support of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are the following major boards and committees: Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army-Navy Petroleum Board—

and those other four that I mentioned are all Joint Chiefs of Staff committees. There is the Joint Chiefs of Staff Logistics Committee, the Joint Chiefs of Staff Munitions Allocations Committee, the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joint Military Transportation Committee, the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joint Communications Board.

Mr. KENNEY. For illustration, the purchase of common items, items that are or can be used by each service, becomes unnecessarily complicated if the specifications are different.

It doesn't do us any good to say that the Army, the Navy, or the Air Force is going to purchase all of one particular type of item, if the specifications of the services are different. So that you are not really solving the problem when you start out and just assign procurement in and of itself. You have to start right down at the bottom. Senator ROBERTSON. But such things as coal and lumber and petroleum would be common to all forces.

Mr. KENNEY. There are certain specifications for coal and petroleum and lumber.

Senator ROBERTSON. That is true, but your answer does not convey, does it, any desire to keep those separate?

Mr. KENNEY. No, I am not advocating keeping them separate, but I am just trying to point out that you have to start at the bottom of this problem, and you do not just solve the problem by saying that the Army is going to purchase all lumber.

Senator ROBERTSON. You said the one thing that I am so thoroughly in agreement with you on: coordination has got to start at the bottom. That is the fundamental, I think, of coordination or unification or whatever you like to call it. It has got to start at the bottom. During the war and since the war, you have started all these coordination efforts from the bottom, and they come up, and they get larger, and they are efficient and they are saving money and they improve the efficiency of the various services. To my mind, in using the phrase, "to start at the bottom," you hit one of the major features of the whole unification system.

Mr. KENNEY. And that is one of the reasons why I am in favor of S. 758 because it continues the work we have done starting at the

bottom. And that is why I testified so strongly in your committee last year in opposition to the Thomas bill; because it was throwing everything_together and working out the details at a later date.

Senator ROBERTSON. I think S. 758 does start at the top. It is going to take advantage of the work you have done at the bottom, true, but it starts at the top, and it is a top set-up.

Mr. KENNEY. I like to say that, rather than starting at the top and scrambling everything down underneath, that it starts at the bottom. and

Senator ROBERTSON. There is no difference between us, Mr. Secretary, as to starting at the bottom in these things and working up.

Senator TYDINGS. Mr. Secretary, on that point I am a little confused. How can you start at the bottom unless you get the order at the top to start at the bottom?

Mr. KENNEY. That is why I made my statement earlier, which I did, which was to the effect that organizational forms, in and of themselves, do not create economies, but they create the driving force and momentum for putting them through.

Senator TYDINGS. But my point is this: that as I listened to all of these very proper and progressive steps that have been taken in the field of both cooperation and coordination, it seemed to me that the order creating them came from the top, and from the Joint Chiefs of Staff in most cases. For example, take the Aeronautical Board; who created that?

Mr. KENNEY. The Aeronautical Board was created by the two Secretaries.

Senator TYDINGS. All right. Would you call that the top?
Mr. KENNEY. Reasonably close to it, Senator.

Senator TYDINGS. Then the genesis of the cooperation and coordination was at the top, but the real cooperation and coordination was made at the bottom, in pursuance to directives or orders or programs or policies promulgated at the top; is that right?

Mr. KENNEY. That is right. There is no doubt of that.

Senator TYDINGS. And that is what you are attempting to continue here, is it not?

Mr. KENNEY. That is right.

Senator TYDINGS. Now, do you know of any substantial savings in either the field of economy or that of efficiency that have evolved without direction or action at the top? And if so, what are they? Mr. KENNEY. Well, I can't think of any at the present moment, Senator.

Senator TYDINGS. I think that I am thoroughly in favor of what both you and Senator Robertson have said: that we want this coordination and cooperation to come from the bottom. And my purpose at this point is simply to point out that that cooperation and coordination does come from the bottom when you have vision and imagination at the top that will permit you to pursue policies which will make that possible.

Mr. Kenney. It does not do any good for the fellow down at the bottom to do that if he feels that he is not going to be supported when he gets upstairs.

Senator TYDINGS. It will not cover the whole foundation of procedure unless there is an order saying it shall cover it. In other words,

Company A over here may have the most efficient outfit in the regiment, as to the way it operates. But it will not spread to the other companies unless the colonel up there sends the word down that he wants them all to do it in this efficient and cooperative way. Is that not true?

Mr. KENNEY. That is right. But the direction should come in the manner as outlined here; not by saying, "We will throw all the departments into one department, and then we will work out the details at another date.”

Senator TYDINGS. That is right. And I think this: that all the cooperation and coordination and efficiency naturally come from the bottom; but it comes because the top makes it possible for the bottom to do it. And without the top making it possible, everything is static and just simply stays locked up in watertight compartments.

Senator ROBERTSON. I agree with you, but I differ as to the top. I say that the top, when it comes to coordination, is the Secretary of War, the Secretary of the Navy, and the Secretary of Air. They are the tops of their individual services. When those three men, or presently two men, get together and say, "We think it is advisable that we should purchase our lumber requirements in one order," or "our gasoline and fuel oil," I think then those two heads can say to the lower ones in each department, "Now, boys, we want you to get together and purchase these things and save this money." But when you go and put one man, who is neither Army, Navy, nor Air, above, and say to these three, "Boys, get together and do this," I do not think you are increasing the efficiency of it one little bit.

Senator TYDINGS. My whole point was that I thought maybe we were assuming that these economies, from the brain of Jove, so to speak, were evolved by a whole procedural operation which really took root. In other words, the man at the top plants the seed at the bottom and then watches it grow. But without the man at the top to plant the seed, there would not be any crop.

Senator ROBERTSON. I agree with you there, but I say that the man at the top is the civilian secretary of the individual forces.

Senator SALTONSTALL. Senator Tydings, is there any example to be found in the situation of a Democratic President and a Republicancontrolled Congress?

Senator TYDINGS. Well, I would not want to have this quoted on the outside.

Senator ROBERTSON. Well, it will not be. [Laughter.]

Senator TYDINGS. Sometimes the way to get a thing quoted is to ask that it not be quoted.

But I think there never was a time when opposite parties were in control of various branches of government that there was not a great deal of good to offset any particular evils that might evolve from it. I have served both in a Democratic Congress under a Republican President and in a Republican Congress under a Democratic President, and most of the time we have been able to agree. Here you have the two departments represented, the House and the Senate, just like the Army and Navy. And then you have your Secretary of National Defense, who is analogous to the President. And we usually come around to what is best in the long run. And the times when

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you do not have that, and they are all the same, you get excesses which are not always good for the country.

Mr. KENNEY. I might say that Senator Saltonstall has just called my attention to the conclusion of the British white paper, which I think goes a long way toward answering the discussion that Senators Robertson and Tydings have had. The statement is:

The changes proposed are based on the experience of the last decade and are designed to place on a secure foundation and to carry forward into peace the machinery for interservice cooperation which worked so smoothly and effectively in war. The Government are satisfied that the functions of the various parts have been defined with sufficient precision to enable the duties to be carried out effectively, while at the same time the organization as a whole remains sufficiently flexible to allow the process of evolution to continue, as it has throughout the century, so that the central machinery for defense may be progressively adapted to changing needs.

Senator TYDINGS. Mr. Secretary, if you have finished reading that, I would like to reiterate what made a very deep impression upon me, as a part of your testimony. You said that your support of this bill came from the fact, not that this evolution would not go on anyhow, perhaps, in some places and in some areas, but that you thought we ought to write into law this experience of the war, because of the fear that when the impact and urgency of war were past, we would go back into the old ways and find that in a new war we would have to go over all of this ground again. And as I understood your testimony, this bill is necessary so as to hold the gains we have already made.

Mr. KENNEY. I think this bill will both hold the gains and will also protect the autonomy of the various departments, which I think is esseential.

Senator TYDINGS. And conversely, without the bill, you stated that gains we had made during the war would be dissipated over a period of time in peace, and we might have to start again evolving the same thing as we had to do heretofore.

Mr. KENNEDY. That is correct.

Senator TYDINGS. And that is the ultimate reason, or the primary reason, why you feel that this bill is necessary in the public interest? Mr. KENNEY. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will stand in recess until tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock.

(Whereupon, at 12:05 p. m., an adjournment was taken, to reconvene Wednesday, April 9, 1947, at 10 a. m.)